After the Explosion
by reader304
Summary: Where did Darth Vader go after he stabilized his ship and left the Battle of Yavin?


They blew it up!

Our Star. The ultimate weapon. Big enough to be a moon. Powerful enough to destroy a planet. Expensive enough to bankrupt the whole Outer Rim.

I wish there was someone to choke, something to crush, some room to express my anger. But no, I'm trapped in this stupid tiny TIE craft, waiting to be rescued. _Rescued_, like some lost…child.

I'm going to punish the captain of that star cruiser for taking so long—severely. My master will also be extremely displeased about the loss of this project. He had high hopes for crushing the Rebellion, once and for all. With all those responsible for the structure already dead, his anger is going to be taken out on everyone else, quite possibly for several standard months.

This is so _boring_. I could swoop around a bit, I suppose, but there's no point. I'm not going anywhere. The limited capacity of this craft's tiny hyperdrive has already been exhausted, just fleeing.

That's the worst part, really. I've never had to run from anyone or anything, but here I am light-years from where I want to be waiting for that captain to _deign_ to pick me up. All because some damn pilot got lucky.

_There's no such thing as luck._

What was that? A disembodied voice—HIS voice—but that can't be—I killed him just two days ago.

_Did you see a body?_

Force!

_I know more about the force than you ever will. I AM the force now. I told you I would become more powerful, Anakin._

LEAVE ME ALONE! THAT IS NOT MY NAME!

_As you wish…_

Silence reigns. Did I imagine that? Or is it truly possible…

I must have imagined it. I'm going crazy with nothing to do but stare at the stars. Staring at stars—something a weakling like Anakin would have done. I'm better than him. I'm stronger. I'm a better pilot. No one can out-fly me. No one can last against me for any length of time.

Except…that last X-wing. The one that got the lucky shot. He had reinforcements arrive suddenly, but even before that he was doing better than the rest. He was the only one left alive. Whoever that pilot was, he must have very good reflexes. He must be Force-sensitive and not know it. There's lots of people in the galaxy like that, with the Temple gone. Such a strong one, however, could be dangerous to leave alive. I must inform my master of his existence once that horrifically slow ship arrives.

Wait…exactly whom am I planning on telling the Emperor we need to kill? I must discover his name, first. It shouldn't be hard—the Rebellion won't be able to keep it quiet once news of the Death Star's destruction gets out, and they'll tell everyone about that in order to gain support for the Rebellion. So I'll get the First Mate to find his name, once I'm done crushing the captain's skull.

What a strange course of events recently! The Death Star is finally completed, its plans get stolen, we find the ship but not the plans, my old master shows up, we track the Rebels down, they blow up the Death Star. In the middle of it all I have to interrogate...my daughter.

Why do I hesitate to even think of it? Force knows there's no one around (I think I'll choke the First Mate too…) and anyway I've kept it a secret this long that I know who she is. Those fools on Alderaan probably died thinking I didn't know. Really, though. How stupid do-or did-they think I am? An Alderaanian princess with a Nabooan name, adopted the very day Anakin Skywalker and his wife died. Maybe they could have gotten away with it if they had sent her to live with some peasants. But Senator Organa showed her off like she was his flesh and blood.

I met her at a senatorial function, some sort of reception or other, when she was still a child. Organa's wife had just died and he had taken to bringing his daughter on official trips. Already she was a perfect little lady, and she was using the Force without knowing it. She was scanning the room, sensing which people were friendly and which sinister. I felt her tiny but undeniable presence and reacted involuntarily. I saw her frown when she felt me, like she was trying to remember something or figure out a puzzle. She was the spit and image of my lost angel; just looking at her brought a surge of painful memories. I had to leave the reception.

I reached out to her through the Force several times. I didn't tell her who I was, but I gave her memories of her mother, taught her to hide her Force-sensitivity better, showed her how to put up mental walls to block unfriendly presences in the Force. She learned quickly. I stopped talking to her that way after just a few months because I didn't want my master to find out. He would never allow her to live unless she turned to the dark side, and she was a Rebel through and through even way back then. Unfortunately.

I got away with ignoring her involvement for a while. She crossed a line stealing those plans, though. I insisted on being the one to torture her so I could stop when she seemed close to giving in. I told the guards she was too weak for further torture and the cell block medic did not dare contradict my analysis. Still, I had to hold her back while her home was destroyed. There were too many people watching. I felt the wave of emotions as if they were my own, and the strongest was guilt. I couldn't stand to do that to her anymore. So I suggested we let her be rescued. We were still going to kill her and her Rebel friends, but at least she would not be called a traitor by people she cared about. I can call her a traitor because I am her enemy.

I remember my first days as a Sith lord, watching people I had once respected and fought along with realize that I was not on their side anymore. I remember having to kill them. I remember losing my beautiful angel. I don't want Leia to become a Sith. I don't want her to betray her friends. She would be better off dead.

She's escaped both fates, for the moment. That pilot saved the whole base, which I am sure is even now being evacuated while I drift here, waiting for the chance to promote the third mate after I choke the captain, the first mate, and the second mate.

The comlink crackles to life. "Lord Vader, we are approaching your location now. I apologize for the del—" I hear a satisfying crunch as the captain dies.

…

I was right. The new captain did not have a lot of trouble finding the name of that pilot. In less than a standard day he has already delivered a report to me. The Rebel Alliance has its own holomedia; it's encrypted, of course, but they don't broadcast anything as obvious as "the coordinates of the new base are this," so we don't read it too often and they don't mind when we do. It comes with the territory.

I've watched this minute-long clip a dozen times already, at least. If this respirator would allow it I would have gasped the first time. "Luke Skywalker, newcomer to the Alliance, hero of the Battle of Yavin, is given a medal by our leader Princess Leia Organa," the announcer says as they show my daughter put something around the neck of a young man. Then he turns around, and I can see his face for three seconds before the clip ends.

I don't need the Force to tell me who that looks like. But that, I know, is impossible. My master wasn't lying when he said I had killed my sweet angel. Our child survived, yes, but I already know who she is.

Then again, there is the name. Anakin's mother is dead and he didn't have a father; he has no more relatives unless you count that paragon of feminine beauty and strength smiling out from the holovid. So why would anyone else have that last name?

No relatives—that's not quite true. It is painful to remember that visit to Tatooine, but a stepbrother and stepsister-in-law do come to mind. Still, they'd be named…Lars, wasn't it? Not Skywalker. And there's no reason any child of theirs would look like that.

Luke Skywalker is a mysterious man, about twenty years old, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, with a Jedi's reflexes and a dead man's last name. The only mention of him in the databases—anywhere—is only one minute long, but he just destroyed the Empire's ultimate weapon. He doesn't have a birth certificate. He has no records of flight training. He never even had one of those social networking holos while he was in school. He's a man without a past.

I look again at his face. He seems familiar. Wait a second—he was the one screaming when I killed Obi-wan! He was on the Death Star! Luke "rescued" Leia!

_A memory springs to mind of a dimly lit antechamber two decades ago. "I like the names Luke for a boy and Leia for a girl," my pregnant angel says, "But I wish we could use both somehow."_

"_Maybe it'll be twins," I hear Anakin say. She laughs._

Twins. Of course. How could I not have seen it? Leia Organa is my daughter. Luke Skywalker is my son.

Naturally they wanted me to think the child was dead, not find out there were two living children. If you are looking to hide two people, it makes sense to split them up. And maybe you would hide the less threatening one in plain sight—as bait, in a way—but train her to be more dangerous than she looks. It worked, too—once I discovered her I never thought to keep looking for others, and I didn't try to take her back or kill her. I left her alone. Meanwhile, they kept my son somewhere far out of sight. Somewhere I haven't been for twenty years, but where there are people who remember my last name. Tatooine seems like an obvious choice. And we were just near there-that's where Leia jettisoned her droids. Maybe those droids had a message for my son, or whoever was protecting him—it must have been Obi-wan—a message that it was time to come out of hiding before I used that horrible planet for target practice.

It was a good plan. I cannot help but be impressed by its thoroughness before Force-throwing something at the wall.

My anger at being fooled by a Rebel conspiracy is overpowered by the confusion I now feel. Should I tell my master about my son's existence? He will want to know who destroyed his flagship. He might insist my son be killed. But I have no connection to this boy; why do I care if he dies?

And yet…I do care. That was the best flying I've ever seen; the Force must be strong with him. I feel a strange sense of pride at his destruction of our seemingly indestructible space station. Even if he has cast his lot in with the Rebels, he's still my son. I don't want him to die.

I'm not thinking about this clearly. I have two living children. They have both joined the Rebel Alliance and, therefore, are my sworn enemies. But neither of them knows that I am their father, so it's not really a betrayal. One of them looks just like her, and one of them looks just like…me.

I don't want to have to kill either of them, but more than that I don't want Leia to be a traitor. She's too beautiful, too innocent, too much like the other woman whose life I destroyed. Luke, on the other hand, seems more like Anakin. He has to be stronger in the Force than her; Leia doesn't have the reflexes to fly like that. He's obviously impulsive; he pulled some crazy stunts while rescuing her from the Death Star (I'm glad now that I read those reports before it blew up!). He's newer to the Alliance and he grew up on a planet notorious for being full of a cutthroat mentality. He might be more open to the possibility of switching sides, particularly if I somehow backed him into a corner. I wouldn't have to kill him, if he was willing to join us.

The Rebels hid one child in plain sight. Two can play at that game. Of course, if I reveal his existence, his fate is out of my hands. I don't trust my master. The Emperor might kill him. Luke might refuse to join us. Or he might know about his sister and accidentally reveal it to the wrong people. I meditate briefly, looking to the future, but it is clouded from my sight. The only clear path is the one in which the Emperor orders the destruction of the Alliance's latest "hero" and my son is made into a martyr for the Rebels. I'd lose him and the war, then. No, I won't let the Emperor kill him. My master has already cost me my wife and almost my daughter as well. I want my son to know me as more than a faceless enemy. I want to know him as more than a good pilot.

Before I can change my mind, I open a channel to the Emperor and kneel. "Master, I have discovered that I have a child who survived after my wife died. I have a son named Luke, and he has great potential."


End file.
